Obama & Dems Flailing, Failing ....

Some good reads:

John Fund in WSJ : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574475292426931168.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

Karl Rove in WSJ : (ok, so he's a little biased) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473372635087870.html

Bad News for Obama [Peter Wehner]

The most recent Fox News poll contains several interesting data points:*Only “43 percent of voters say that they would vote to re-elect President Obama if the 2012 election were held today, down from 52 percent six months ago, from April 22-23, 2009.”*“

Looking ahead to the 2010 Congressional election, for the first time this year the Republicans have the advantage: 42 percent of voters say they are more likely to back the Republicans to provide a check on President Obama’s power, while 38 percent say they would vote for the Democrat to help the president pass his policies.”*“

Majorities of Democrats, 53 percent, Republicans, 78 percent, and Independents, 61 percent, agree the country is more divided these days. All in all, 64 percent of Americans think the country is more politically divided today — that’s more than twice the number who say it is not more divided, 31 percent.”

All in all, this is bad news for the president. It doesn’t mean things can’t change; in fact, they will — for better or worse. But it does mean that right now the tide is running fairly strongly against Obama and the Democrats. Obama has not been quite the transformative president his supporters thought he would be — at least not in the way they imagined. He is, however, reviving the hopes and spirits of the GOP in a way that almost no one anticipated.


'Could This “Smart” President Be Really, Really Stupid?' [Veronique de Rugy]

The title alone made me want to read this piece in Harper's Magazine.

But it got even better:

Are you tired of hearing how “smart” Barack Obama is? I reached my limit over the summer, when The New York Times Magazine quoted Valerie Jarrett, the president’s liaison to Chicago City Hall, declaring, “I mean, he’s really by far smarter than anybody I know.”

The article is here.


Scared of the VAT ? [Veronique de Rugy]

Well you should be. The Value-Added-Tax seems to be on many people's minds these days. For instance, John Podesta, the co-chairman of his transition team, and Nancy Pelosi, of course, think it's a great idea. And it's not as if these guys want to replace the income tax with a VAT, they want to adopt a European-style VAT that's added on top of the income tax.

Here is Podesta making his pitch:

"There’s going to have to be revenue in this budget,” said Podesta, Clinton’s former chief of staff and co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s transition team, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing today.

A so-called consumption tax would “create a balance” with European and Japanese economies and “could potentially have a substantial effect on competitiveness,” said Podesta. Value- added taxes in Europe and Japan encourage savings by taxing consumption.

Hmm? Increasing taxes would make us more competitive. He lost me.
Keep reading this post . . .


Krauthammer: On Joe Biden’s role in the debate over Afghanistan:

I think it's hard to believe this sudden media inflation of the wisdom of Joe Biden is accidental.

It's clear that there is a debate inside the White House.You got McChrystal, a man of incredible authority and stature, who says you’ve got to go this way with a heavy troop involvement, and you've got Petraeus, the man who saved Iraq, saying the same, saying otherwise we're going to lose.

And the administration obviously is resisting, and it has to have a champion of the other side, and it's the hapless vice president. So some way you have to inflate his status and to make it at least somebody that will be [seen as] a credible alternative.

I'm not sure that the Biden plan is a plan. It's an idea, and the administration obviously, in its leaks, is tending towards the Biden idea. But it needs to have some stature on that side, and that's why I'm little bit skeptical about the [sudden] discovery of the vast storage of military wisdom in a guy [who], if you remember, opposed the Gulf War and opposed the surge and supported the Iraq war, which he now says was one of the great mistakes of American history — 0 for 3.